Elderly

[Tarrel]

An elderly person's prospects post-SHTF will vary so much depending on their individual circumstances, as has been mentioned above. Example; my Mother is 85 and lives independently in an apartment in our compound. She is not on any medication, apart from an anti-inflammatory for arthritis, is mobile and mentally alert. She also grew up in the "make do and mend" war years. Post-SHTF, given our situation and her circumstances, I think she'd fare quite well - unless security took a serious dive and we had to bug out.

There are, however, so many things that could affect other elderly people to the point of truncating their life span; lack of availability of critical medication or specialist medical care, lack of heating, the shock of the event that caused TSTHTF, susceptibility to infections that we could fight off without antibiotics, but an older person might not, etc, etc.

Many doomsters predict a die-off as a result of a societal collapse or other such event. Bear in mind this doesn't have to be caused by people shooting each other in the street. A reduction in life expectancy, together with maybe a rise in infant mortality in the harsher post-SHTF environment, would be enough to cause a population decline over a couple of decades. (Although a few pitch-battles will certainly help things along!)